Predicting soil conservation service in the Jinghe River Basin under climate change

Abstract

As an essential regulating service, soil conservation service is the primary way to suppress soil erosion. Accurate assessment of soil conservation service can provide scientific support for regional ecological protection and is of great significance to regional environmental security. However, because of the lack of future high-resolution meteorological data, there are few researches on ecosystem services prediction, resulting in limited persuasion to guide ecological construction. Therefore, this study uses the WRF model to obtain a high-resolution meteorological dataset (0.05° × 0.05°, 2021–2035, daily) to drive the SWAT model in the Jinghe River basin. Through this method, we introduce the dynamical downscaling method into the research field of ecosystem services to predict the temporal-spatial characteristics of soil conservation service. The results indicate that: first, the dynamical downscaling results of the WRF model can reflect the magnitude, temporal fluctuation, and spatial distribution of regional precipitation and temperature. Second, multi-year average (2021–2035) soil conservation is 9.79 × 108 t (RCP4.5) and 10.98 × 108 t (RCP8.5), which are significantly higher than the 2000–2020 period (4.21 × 108 t). The inter-annual variation of soil conservation service is affected considerably by precipitation, with correlation coefficients of 0.80 (RCP4.5) and 0.81 (RCP8.5). Finally, the spatial distribution of soil conservation service under two scenarios is similar. The research results provide scientific support for ecological construction and scientific management, and the research ideas are also applicable to other ecosystem services prediction at the watershed scale.